On infighting

After Michael Chong first resigned from the federal cabinet, I'd assumed the story would fade away fairly quickly since nobody seemed to have any reason to want to keep it in the press. But apparently the Cons' inner circle isn't going to let the matter drop without a public fight:

Publicly, Chong said he disagreed profoundly with the resolution Harper brought forward because it embraced an "ethnic nationalism" he couldn't support. He said he reflected for five days upon his course of action after Harper sprang the resolution on his caucus in response to a Bloc Québécois motion that the Québécois "form a nation" plain and simple...

And while he didn't cite it as a reason for quitting, Chong made clear he had not been consulted by Harper in the crafting of the "nation" resolution.

An insider called that complete nonsense. "He and the PM discussed this over the course of the summer on at least two occasions if not more. And the PM did not make the decision about proceeding with this until he had the caucus discussion last Wednesday."

Chong declined an interview.

Harper's circle feels Chong did not convey his deep-seated uneasiness to the Prime Minister and should have.

In fact, the insider says, Chong's concerns were "not unique in the party in that regard, but the idea that he might throw up a principled objection to the point of resigning? No, that was never in discussion."...

Inside the Harper government, the view is that Chong, first elected in 2004, has made a career-ending move.

Needless to say, it's unlikely that Chong would agree with the assessment that his political career is over. And while it may be clear that he won't have any more advancement opportunities in a party with PMS at the helm, he'll have plenty of options to build his own future at the expense of Harper's - whether by jumping ship, by publicly telling his side of the story and letting the Cons boot him for "breaching confidence" in doing so, or by building a competing faction within the Cons (where at least some MPs appear to both agree with Chong on the merits of the nation issue, and see him as having handled his resignation reasonably.)

But barring a quick retraction from the "insiders" in question, the one option which seemingly must be off the table for Chong is that of going quietly to the back benches - as he surely can't afford to contest an election while publicly under the thumb of a party apparatus which has decided that he has no future. And whichever way Chong chooses to fight back, it's likely that the Cons as a whole will end up weaker for the battle.